Burning Blue Soul

Y'know, if only the Trenchcoat Mafia could've discovered The The instead of
Marilyn Manson. When I was attending ...

Y'know, if only the Trenchcoat Mafia could've discovered The The instead of
Marilyn Manson. When I was attending high school in the '80s, all us
lonely, depressed potential sociopaths took solace in bands like The The,
the Cure and Joy Division. If we merely killed ourselves, well, hey, it was
enough. But good old fashioned self-immolation has become outmoded.
Nowadays, you've gotta take a few dozen strangers down with you to really
get off. And as usual, I attribute all the youth violence in society today
not to the proliferation and accessibility of guns, but on the paucity of
credible rock stars. Maybe I'm joking, maybe I'm not. But where the hell
did all the Joe Strummers go?

Now, I was raised in bible-belt Texas, so rest assured there was no shortage
of firearms in our house. But luckily, instead of toting guns, the lost boys
and girls of my generation either flocked to bad metal, or video games like
"Galaga." Still others, out of desperation for something more substantial,
went out and stumbled upon landmark albums like The The's official debut
album, 1981's Burning Blue Soul.

As stifling as things could get in Baptist country, The The lead vocalist
Matt Johnson seemed to understand our isolation, and was explicit in his
indictment of our parents' sham Christian mores. He made it okay to revel
in our non-believing misfit gloom. His aetheistic gallows humor and cutting
social commentary was delivered with a bracing defiance. His songwriting
didn't induce the kind of feeble hopelessness that would normally lead a
bored, confused suburban kid to lose it completely.

Inhabiting a shadowy interzone between goth, new wave, and punk, Burning
Blue Soul manages to plumb depths that Robert Smith and Peter Murphy could
only lightly touch upon. Johnson delivers his kernels of realist wisdom in
a flat Gregorian monotone: "100,000 people were burned/ I felt a pang of
concern/ What are we waitin' for/ A message of hope/ From the Pope/ I think
he got shot as well." And what over-ponderous mope-rocker can't relate
to observations like this: "When you hide in your bed/ And look in your
head/ You find you've gone deeper than you should/ It could be your
shallowness is your strength."

In a sense, the ghostly production values on Burning Blue Soul sound
like fairly upstanding (and typical) 4AD fare: the isolated vocals, the
guitars wet with reverb, the basslines slithering eerily along the nether
regions of a song. Thick guitar hailstorms come and go. Textures vacillate
from vaulted cathedrals of sound to barely discernible structures. "The
River Flows East in Spring" is built around little more than a deformed
keyboard hook and offbeat handclaps. There are no beginnings, middles
or ends. Johnson completely shuns verse- chorus- verse predictability,
and doesn't even find much need to tie down his songs with conventional
drumming or consistent backbeats.

Of course, Johnson eventually lured ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr into
the studio for 1989's ground-breaking Mind Bomb. Marr brought a
richer and more grounded sound to Johnson's near- formless compositions.
The band's sound eventually evolved into the mellow New Order-ish pop of
1993's Dusk, and took a detour with 1995's near-ridiculous batch
of Hank Williams cover songs entitled Hanky Panky.

So, here's a novel idea for all you alienated, potentially homicidal
youngsters: try trading in those ridiculous Marylin Manson CDs, and pawn
whatever artillery your NRA-member father bought you for Christmas. Cleanse
your tortured souls in the church of Matt Johnson. Take heed, all ye
little doom-obsessed freaks, Manson's music will eventually make you
open a vein-- or worse, open fire on your peers. But most of all, realize
that Manson's crusade is merely to open your little pocketbooks and swindle
you out of those hard-earned weekly allowances. Take a listen to The The's
Burning Blue Soul. The lovable folks at 4AD reissued it just for you.
Maybe it'll even open a few of your minds to more pacific and productive
possibilities of expressing all that pent-up hate.